Unit 14.docx

Unit 14 Gender as a Public Issue Conceptions of gender run so deep across cultures that they are present in our language system. In German, we have der, die, and das, which is male, female, and neutral. This language allows use neutrality. Whereas in French, le and la, there is no neutral. Spanish a...

Unit 14 Gender as a Public Issue Conceptions of gender run so deep across cultures that they are present in our language system. In German, we have der, die, and das, which is male, female, and neutral. This language allows use neutrality. Whereas in French, le and la, there is no neutral. Spanish also uses language to express gender as a binary, objects themselves are feminine and masculine. In English, we use generic masculine. E.g., the word Mankind refers to humanity, males, and females. With the use of the male term, we infer females as well, which is a way of silencing or making invisible the female half of humanity. This shows up in many ways: policemen, brotherhood, firemen, "In all our son′s command," which were part of the lyrics of the national anthem until it was changed to "In all of us command." We have made progress in getting rid of generic masculine. Now, we have a new generic masculine emerging from Canadian youth, the term guys. The equivalent is gals. If we use gals, the audience will infer I am speaking to females and if I used guys the room would think I am addressing everyone. We have made invisible the female marker in our language. Thus, on a deep level, language can teach us gender biases and inequalities that disfavor females. Our society is differentiated by gender. Individuals are systematically treated differently based on their sex. In the world of employment, women tend to have jobs with less pay and prestige whereas men have jobs with more pay and more prestige. In 1953, about 22% of females were in the labor force and 97-98% of males were. Over time, up to 2013, males and females were almost equivalent in terms of how much they are represented. Most frequently, women tend to be employed as speech-language pathologists, elementary and middle school teachers, and social workers. This is in line with what we have learned about gender socialization. They’re socialized to communicate, to be empathetic, to be kind, to be with children. And you can see all these jobs are concentrated in these areas. Whereas men fill areas such as chefs, architects, engineers, fire fighters, aircraft pilots, and flight engineers. For most of human history, many nurses have been female and an area where males have had less access. So, some nursing ads have been marketed towards men to address nursing shortages. However, as you can see, this ad plays with gender steretypes. Women increasingly have access to areas such as logging, construction, firefighting. Though they tend to meet challenges in these careers. What we see from these stats is that society has valued male contributions more. This is called gender stratification=unequal access of males and females to property, prestige, and power. Remember, these are Weber′s categories. This not only applies to social class, but gender. Women tend to be at the bottom when we′re analysing hierarchy. Even if women obtain careers in STEM, they tend to be not be paid as much as males. So, in Canada, there is no equality and this is the stratification that’s going on. This one distills it into simple numbers. In 2016, Stats Canada and United Nations, you can see that for every dollar a male makes in Canada, a female makes 73.5 cents. So, that’s a little more than a 25% difference. This is more extreme among Indigenous and minority women. If we look at female representation in our parliament. In 1968, we had one female which did not even register as 1%. In 2019, female representation is now 30%. This certainly is progress but 70% remain male. This is significant considering a country like Sweden, with its electoral process, neither gender can take up more than 51% in the seats in decision-making. It requires equal representation. Sweden also has generous maternity and paternity leave policies. They have leaves of 3 years at a time. It gives lots of sick time for parents. Not for themselves, but they get to take work off when their kids are sick. Here the number of sick days is at least 60. I did my master′s thesis studying some of these things in Sweden and these were the numbers at the time. It makes that since around half of parliament is female, that these women are bringing these concerns to the table. This is the lesson that Sweden presents to the world. Gender barriers and advantages. The glass ceiling=the invisible barrier that prevents women from reaching the highest executive level. Its called the glass ceiling because theres so much denialism around it; companies will not admit that it′s there. Yet, if you don’t see women at the top levels of administration in any organization then that mirror is most definitely there and they cannot pass it. If you look at the history of the University of Manitoba, which is established in 1877, it has had 12 presidents and two chancellors. Chancellors existed before the role of president was developed and replaced it. Of those 14 presidents since 1877, one has been female. That’s a pretty thick glass ceiling. Women with no family tend to be overlooked in the hiring process. People don’t want to hire them because they assume she′ll have kids eventually and they’ll have to give mat leave. However, they don’t consider that she may be partnered with someone when theyre choosing to have that child. Yet the female pays with the way we set up maternity leaves, paternity leaves, and all our gender notions. So, she pays a greater cost with her opportunities and career advancement. Not because its inevitable but because of the system we have created with our attitudes and policies. On the other hand, men experience the glass elevator=fast-tracking men in women-dominated occupations. So, a male who′s a hairstylist, which has been a female-dominated, suddenly get more promotions and more clients because he′s male. So, even in women-dominated jobs, women are disadvantaged. Conversely, men tend to do more dangerous jobs. This is the glass cellar. 90% of all occupational deaths happen to men firefighting, logging, trucking, military, and construction. So, men live with more risk in many job environments. That said, men tend to be very unwelcoming when women want to do these jobs. Female firefighters report significant harrassment from males, often sexual, as they try to establis their careers because men don’t want them there. Gender as a Violence/Political Issue Most violence is committed by males, as shown by the stats. In sociology, we want a very good description of what’s going on before we prescribe a solution, so stats are not enough. In Canada, 90% of violent crimes are committed by males. Here are types of violent crime: Common Assault - applying force, threatening to apply force e.g. pushing, slapping, punching, face-to-face verbal threats Assault with a weapon - carries, threatens, or uses a weapon Aggravated assault - wounds, maims, disfigures or endangers life of the victim Females are more likely to be victims of common assault. Many domestic violence survivors have horrific accounts of what it is like to live with a man who is physically, psychologically, and financially abusive. Males are twice as likely to be victims of weapon assault. They are also 3x as likely to be victims of aggravated assault. The picture shows us that men are disproportionately victims of extreme forms of violence whereas as women are more prone to daily domestic violence. One thing is clear: it is mostly males who perpetrate violence and on the receiving end of extreme violence. But physical violence is not a social problem as it is so often labeled in the media. Because think back to our gender socialization lecture. What does our culture teach males about what it means it to be successfully masculine? You need to be violent. You need to be assertive. You need to be aggressive. You need to shut down all your more tender emotions. You can't express fear, you can't express sadness, you can't express vulnerability. This does deep psychological harm to males and some individuals take this in the direction of physical violence. So, rather than simply thinking about violence as a social and male problem, we have a masculinity problem, a cultural problem. If we are going to encourage our males that and make them feel like they’re not male because if they’re not masculine enough because they’re not tough enough, then, that’s on us. So, it′s important to add context to the statistics and distill what is really going on. We′re also going to look at some cultural practices in the world of violence and political issues. Here I am going to employ critical cultural relativism. It’s important in culturally diverse country in Canada that we practice good, generous curiosity and welcome if we really want to promote a diverse and inclusive country. That said, some cultures enforce their own versions of gender inequality that may transgress human rights. We do need to ask questions and that’s critical cultural relativism at work. We want to welcome different ways of being without human rights transgressions. -Middle Eastern Honour Killings & Kitchen "Fires": many cultures operate on a shame/honor basis, these are their biggest values. Which is different in Canada, we′re more individualistic, competitive, and success driven. Here honor is tied to the sexual purity of daughters and wives. So, you must keep your women pure for your family to be honourable. So, if a girl dates a boy the parents don’t approve of, such as different culture or religion or were dating behind their backs, then that daughter has shamed her family. The response to that is to kill her to restore the family honour. Note that it does not matter how promiscuous males are, it is the females that take the blame. In India, they practice dowries, where the bride′s family gifts the groom′s family as part of the marriage exchange. If the family or husband are not happy with the gift, but will carry on with the marriage, in many cases they will stage a kitchen fire to murder the bride. Women often cook on open flames, both urban and rural. And so, they pour oil on her, and they light her on fire. He is then free to marry again and collect another dowry. This is not uncommon, and it is a huge problem. Kitchen fire rates are often not reported and often the enforcement policies of the country collaborate to keep these rates hidden. So, we get these rates from different places, but the range is 5000-20,000 per year. These rates are likely lower than what they really are. -Islamic purdah: in Islamic countries there’s an emphasis on family honour and sexual purity of females. So, there is pressure to keep women at home. Women are also not allowed to be present when guests are present. This is also why they are veiled because if you can’t see her, she can’t see you. You may recall Mahsa Amini from Iran, Iran had a significant number of protests against the hijab in 2022. There were both men and women, they wanted the freedom to choose the hijab. Mahsa Amini spoke up and she was arrested by the morality police. She was beat severely to death. She was murdered because she chose to speak out against this repressive practice. That’s the degree of inequality present in some cultures. -Female genital mutilation: removal of the clitoris, and/or labia minora, labia majora, or two or all three depending on the culture. Clitoris is a main way for women to have orgasms but I won′t get too much into that. Labia minora is the small set of lips and the majora is the large set of lips. These lips are important because they help to stretch in childbirth to help babies come out without too much tearing. It′s practiced extensively in 28 countries in Africa, some parts of Asia and the Middle East. This happens between the ages of 13-14 and there is usually no medical equipment used. Usually, it is an unsterilized razor, a piece of sharp glass or a crude set of scissors. The girl is held down and then they sow her back together and they add a small straw for healing so she can menstruate and urinate. This cause physical and psychological shock, hemorrhaging and severe blood loss. Some girls die and if they survive, they have significant difficulty urinating (1-2 hours waiting), extreme pain while menstruating, reoccurring bladder infections, renal failure, and infertility. This is ironic because these are the cultures where women are the most valued because they can have babies. And of course, there is nearly or complete loss of sexual pleasure. Increasingly, we have some women outside Canada who had their genitals removed in other countries. Canada has laws to prosecute this. And most recently, because these families would start taking their daughters back to their homeland and having their genitals removed there and then they came back to Canada, they are now prosecuted. If you are a Canadian citizen. This is a set of statistics from 2013. There are other charts, but this is the easiest chart to grasp the rates visually. The darker the color, the higher the rates of FGM happening in that country. We are talking about a significant number of girls. Let′s move closer to home now. There are also human rights transgressions within Canada. In Manitoba, we have a significant problem with young girls being tricked and trafficked off of Northern reserves, Indigenous girls and women. They′re being told that they′re going to get brought to Winnipeg and get a good job in a massage parlor, dancing, modeling, or doing domestic work. What actually happens is that they will get here and probably be raped. They will be controlled by a pimp, be forcibly addicted and work in the sex trade industry. They will have no control over their lives and they will be at risk to their clients, the men who purchase. They will be at risk to their pimps who will beat them and harm them. They may even be locked up so that the pimp can secure the income. And if she is not addicted yet, she may use substances to cope with the life she′s in. Many missing and murdered Indigenous women have had this experience. Yet advocacy groups who want to find these women and identifying and convicting the murderers of these women are not getting funds because the government isnt interested. This is a profound form of gender inequality and racism. I am assuming you are familiar with the #MeToo movement, which was followed by the #ChurchToo movement. This is evangelical Christianity in this case. I work in this field and there are many women who have experienced sexual abuse by pastors, youth pastors, and lay leaders in the church. You would be shocked if you knew how often it happens and who the perpetrators are. Sometimes I work with Muslim women, and their ideology of gender as a binary is extremely strict. Women are viewed as lesser. They cannot have leadership roles, they are controlled by the males in their family. The highest rates of physical and sexual abuse are usually the highest in places of worship. This is true for all religions. Thorughout human history, women have always been viewed as the weaker sex and hence the substandard half of humanity. This is ironic because studies show that women live longer, they have higher pain thresholds, and physically resilient. There is nothing weak about any of this. But if we only consider muscular strength, than on average, males are stronger than females. But we ignore the other stuff I have said and have focused only on that to determine that women are weaker. This has been projected on women as emotionally weaker, cognitively weaker, and physically weaker. This creates all these variations inside countries for women to be treated profoundly unequally and to be harmed. So, gender inequality is very real and it is hard to realize this because we live in Canada but we cannot make the mistake to be complacent with the progress we have made. Gender as a Personal Issue We have gained some equality in the workplace. In the 1960s, few women were in the workforce, they were doing the unpaid labour in the household (childcare, grocery shopping, the cooking, and the cleaning). But with women now in the workforce, who’s doing that work? What we know statistically is that while women have gained considerably in terms of paid employment and career opportunities in the last 40-50 years, notions of gender inequality have not translated into the domestic world. So gendered ideologies of housework as women′s work tend to be present at significant levels. In 2017, a survey was done to see the labor division by gender. Dark blue is tasks done by males, mid blue is tasks done by women, and light blue is tasks shared equally. For example, 10.8% of the time the male makes a meal instead of the female even they are dual earners who spend the same time working. 56.4% of females make the meal. This leaves 32.7% of dual earners sharing this task. Overall, the chart shows how men for the most part is not that involved in the household and outside work is typically seasonal and episodic. This is not the daily stuff that has to be done every day (see circled red). That said, ten years ago shared tasks in light blue would have been smaller. So, there is progress being made but there is lots of work to be done. Around 70-80% of Canadians are in dual earner marriages, and this is the percentage of people we are talking about here. We call this the second shift=women work a full shift at work and a second shift at home at the end of the day. Married women work at least 1.7 hours more per day on domestic tasks than their husbands. This result is consistent and seen among various groups and contexts. Men, typically have an hour or two of leisure time per day than women do. It’s not that women are just sitting at home doing nothing. So, women have gained freedom in the world of careers and employment, but not in the private sphere. Another thing in research examines who is doing the care of elderly parents, so who is keeping track of her parents, making sure they have their groceries, check if they’re sick, if they need a doctor’s appointment, who takes care of them as they get less healthy? Most typically, she does this for her own parents, and she also does it for her partner′s parents. Disproportionately, way less males take care of elderly parents than females. This has been called the third shift=women caring for physical and emotional health of aging parents. So, Naomi Wolf, a Yale school graduate, writes in her book the Beauty Myth, that women are no longer in a career cage. They are free to pursue careers, education related to their careers and advancement and all that, but the cage has not disappeared, it just changed. Women continue to be tyrannized by beauty standards. Our culture demands women to meet beauty standards because that’s what’s valued most in our culture. However, these standards are so ridiculous that they may be a myth. This creates an unhealthy body image, harmful dieting, cutting, mental health challenges, social challenges. To attain this, bodies must be artificially changed by photoshopping, Botox, or surgery. Maybe 5% of women meet these standards. So, this is the new cage, this is the argument Wolf makes. So, these are the kinds of issues that women live with in terms of gender inequality. The Women’s Movement We will discuss two waves: The First Wave (1780-1920), during the enlightenment, there were a few women, especially Mary Wollstonecraft who began to make the argument that men were not only ones being enlightened and only they should have these sorts of freedoms, but what about women? So, she was making the argument that part of enlightenment thought should be that men and women are fundamentally the same, and therefore that women have the right to participate fully in society. They have the same rational abilities as men, so they should have the same freedoms and rights. She makes this point quite eloquently: “I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves." This is an important distinction because this is often what women are accused of when they’re seeking equality. She is advocating for women to have the right to speak their minds, communicate their thoughts, and to pursue the life they want to live and not be limited by gender ideologies. There are all kinds of spheres where women do not belong. Along with enlightenment thought were social reformers. These women did all sorts of activist work. Some of this was the abolition movement of freeing the slaves in the US. Women were disproportionately the ones who moved that forward, though history doesn’t record them nearly as much as it records men though that is a different gender inequality debate. Women filled the rooms when it came to talking about abolition in terms of getting the work done. They were eventually barred from those same rooms because they were women. The argument for freeing the slaves would be if they freed the slaves, then women would be equal as well, but this was ridiculous so why would they do that. The temperance movement, this was an era in the United States where alcohol consumption was causing all kinds of social problems. Women, of course, did not have many rights under the law. They couldn’t own their own property. A husband could take her children away from her. He could come home and beat her without any consequences, no legal penalty. So, men were drinking and coming home drunk and wreaking violence on their families and using a portion of that family’s income. She had no say because she did not earn unless she wanted to be a prostitute or a nanny. So, these families were also without money, which was causing significant problems. So, these women were advocating that alcohol become illegal. It should be banned in production, sale, and consumption. Structural reforms were another area. Child labor, poverty, women, and children were disproportionately paying the price for these sorts of things. So many women worked to try to change this, to provide good community programming, education, and so on that weren’t available to women and families in hopes of creating healthier and better families. Suffrage, women knew that it was mostly men voting in parliament and so they couldn’t push these things through. This birthed the suffrage movement. They needed the vote if they truly wanted to change policies to protect the most vulnerable in society. And that’s how the suffragists came to being suffragettes. That was their process. Somewhat ironically, most of those who populated all these movements had deep Christian commitments. There is some irony in that as Christianity in its current forms, works hard to keep women submissive to male leadership in marriages and churches. And yet the first wave of the women′s movement likely wouldn’t have happened without these women, and they were motivated by their desire for people to have better lives in their society. Part of this structural movement and then the suffrage movement was our own Manitoban Nellie McClung who did huge amounts of work in this area. Abolition was achieved in 1865. Prohibition was legislated in 1920 and lasted until 1933. Female vote was federally acquired in Canada in 1918, but in Manitoba it was 1916 primarily due to the work of Nellie McClung and other strong women who surrounded her. Quebec was the last to institute the female vote in 1940. Things fell quiet because when you want social change, you can′t just have policy change, you also need to have cultural change and that’s often much slower. Always lots of debate around which should come first. My best guess is that it just depends on the circumstance, which would have been the best move yet. But the second wave did eventually happen between 1960-1995. In 1960, Betty Friedan wrote and published the Feminine Mystique. So, this is now, in the advent after WWII. Men went off to fight a different form of gender inequality and women were aggressively recruited in to manufacturing to produce the war machines, to produce the food, to produce everything as men were at war. When they came back, they were taken out again so men could take those jobs. But many of the women would have preferred to stay employed in those kinds of contexts. So, there was lots of cultural messaging about the ideology of bliss of the domestic role of the mother and the housekeeper. However, Friedan challenged this and believed that women were deeply, profoundly unhappy, and restless, in this strong gendered role of being the domestic queen and angelic mother. Turns out, she was right. Her book sold out in hordes and a movement emerged as women realized they were not the only ones who thought this. Out of this came the Royal Commission, on the Status of Women. That was the Canadian one that happened in 1967. The one that happened prior to that would have been JFK in 1961 established a commission on the Status of Women. The intention of these statuses was to examine what is the degree of gender inequality in our respective country. The commissions yielded startling results. Women were not present in the world of religion, business, education, and post-secondary education. They didn’t vote much, and this shows that without cultural change, you will not get much political change. Up to 50 different commissions statuses were commissioned to start working on all of this. They addressed common issues in employment such as equal pay which as you saw in one of the early videos, we′re not there yet, but we are making progress. Here are other ones: -Contraceptives were legalized in 1964 which permanently changed the social landscape with men and women. Women could make choices about if and when they wanted children. -Sexual harassment, it wasn’t uncommon for a female to be expected to be with the boss if she wanted a promotion. She would have to put up with sexual innuendos and being felt up in the coffee room. This used to be part of the reality as a woman in the working world. -Rape laws, the evidence used to be that you had to show that your body was harmed in some way and there had to be a witness. And if a woman does come forward with a rape accusation, her whole life is dissected, and she’s humiliated in court, and she is blamed for the rape. Lots of changes were brought here. Third wave? Currently, there is no identifiable third wave and there is lots to be talked about here. I will just end by saying that I we assume that in the US and Canada, that this is not something to not work on anymore and we must consider what is happening to women across the rest of the globe. And we are not using the voices that we are gaining to help those women.